High-Profile Journalist Reshapes Her Role in Terrorism Fight

On an early Monday morning in 2008, journalist Maria A. Ressa got a cell phone call that would propel her from her familiar world of objective reporting into a high-stakes role in Philippine national affairs as she tried to rescue three of her colleagues kidnapped by terrorists.

Photo: Beth Frondoso

Maria Ressa, on right in foreground, has fought against terrorism as a TV journalist, the lead negotiator in the successful bid to rescue three kidnapped journalists, and the CEO of Rappler, an online news source.

“We’ve been kidnapped, and they want money,” one of her kidnapped colleagues told her in that fateful call, Ms. Ressa recounts in her new book, “10 Days, 10 Years: From Bin Laden to Facebook.”

Ms. Resa, then the news director of ABS-CBN, the Philippines’ biggest media conglomerate, had covered wars, riots, protests and bombings. Suddenly she was heading a crisis team to retrieve her colleagues from Abu Sayyaf, a Philippines-based militant Islamic separatist group.

Ms. Ressa, working with Philippine law enforcement, navigated a new world – dealing with the terrorists she usually wrote about – in order to secure the freedom of ABS-CBN senior correspondent Ces Drilon and cameramen Jimmy Encarnacion and Angelo Valderama. The trio had been abducted in the Philippines province of Sulu while pursuing a possible interview with Abu Sayyaf leader Radulan Sahiron.

What happened behind the scenes during those 10 days — and how it related to global terrorism — is at the heart of a book significant because few writers have connected the dots so well between terrorists based in Southeast Asia and the Middle East and between social media and the terrorism recruitment machine. (The global launch for the hard cover book and digital edition is on March 25.)

Much of the planning for the terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic extremists based in the Middle East had been planned in Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia and the Philippines, writes Ressa, who is now the CEO and executive editor of the online social news source Rappler.

When 9/11 struck, she went back to a 1995 police document in Manila showing the arrest of Abdul Hakim Murad, Ms. Ressa recalled in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The arrest led to the conviction of Murad the following year in New York as one of three terrorists plotting to blow up 12 U.S. airliners.

Meanwhile, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, had an apartment in Ortigas Center, a business district in metro Philippines. They, Ms. Ressa explained, told the police they had a plan to hijack commercial planes.

In her new role at Rappler, Ms. Ressa is exploring how terrorists in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia expand their influence through Facebook, YouTube and other social media to organize, fundraise and attract followers.

“Social media is a game changer,” Ms. Ressa said.

“The battle now is moving to the Internet and social media. You can see from social networks how terrorism spreads. And this is where I have hope. If you can chart how terrorism spreads, you can then deconstruct it and then fight back.”

With the Internet and social media, much has changed since 9/11. On Nov. 6, 2011, Khalil Pareja, the leader of the Rajah Solaiman Movement, a terrorist organization dedicated to creating an Islamic state in the Philippines, appeared in a YouTube video urging “Muslims around the world to support and contribute to their jihad in the Philippines,” Ms. Ressa explains.

Ms. Ressa adds, ”It was the first of its kind for the Philippines, triggering a wave of videos, letters and audio messages from Filipino jihadists which were promoted on al-Qaeda linked sites and jihadist websites like Shumukh al-Islam and Ansar al-Mujahideen English Forum.”

Jihadists declared allegiance to al-Qaeda online and on social networks.

Global counter-terrorism and law enforcement agents have scored many successes in breaking down terror cells and arresting top leaders of the Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant Islamic terrorist group with operations in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Ms. Ressa hopes to help out through what is known as sociogramming. A sociogram program, created at the Naval Postgraduate School in the United States, allows her to see how social networking spreads the ideology that powered attacks over the past decade.

Ms. Ressa says she is cautiously optimistic that terrorism in the Philippines can be eradicated.

Separatist militancy is fueled by poverty in the Philippines rather than ideology, unlike in the Middle East and elsewhere, Ms. Ressa argues. Philippine President Benigno Aquino III needs to address social problems to reduce the appeal of Islamic extremists, she says.

“The government needs to address in Mindanao the problem of law and order and governance if they want terrorism to diminish significantly,” she said, referring to the southern Philippine island that has been a home for terrorists. “It is not an ideological war in the Philippines.”

About Southeast Asia Real Time

Indonesia Real Time provides analysis and insight into the region, which includes Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Brunei. Contact the editors at SEAsia@wsj.com.

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